Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration

Summary

A volume of Jewish Agency for Palestine memoranda dated July 1930. Part 1 reads the first memorandum, Land and Agricultural Development in Palestine, through the start of its Annexe 4: the Agency argues from Articles 6 and 11 of the Mandate for Palestine that land in Palestine is available for intensive cultivation sufficient for the Jewish National Home without prejudicing the existing population, describes Jewish plantation settlements in the Maritime Plain and mixed-farming settlements in the Valley of Esdraelon as proof, and calculates room for 54,900 additional families on 1,310,000 dunams across the Maritime Plain (37,000 families), the Huleh District (4,400), the Beisan Lands (3,600) and the Lower Jordan Valley (9,900), excluding the hills, the Negev and Transjordan (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.7-49). Part 2 completes the first memorandum’s annexes (Evans on Dead Sea water; Joseph Weiz on the hill country, where after a 50 per cent reserve he finds room for 35,000 more families), then reads the second memorandum, Urban Development in Palestine: on the Agency’s March 1930 census, Jewish industry in the narrow sense employs 11,349 persons in 2,688 enterprises, and with building and transport supports about 33,000 people — about a third of post-war immigration — having filled part of an economic vacuum without, the memorandum argues, harming Arabs, so that absorptive capacity is no proper limit on industrial immigration. Part 2 then reads the third memorandum, Immigration into Palestine, through its general argument, its account of the Agency’s immigration machinery, training, selection, medical examination and reception, and its survey of the Diaspora situation through the Yemen section: immigration is presented as creating, with Jewish capital, the employment that absorbs it, and as not displacing Arab labour (PDF p.56-108). Part 3 completes the Diaspora survey — the Yemen concluded and (7) America — and closes the volume on its general claim: about 16 million Jews worldwide live in extreme economic insecurity and, in many countries, political and social depression threatening cultural and moral degeneration, so immigration must proceed to the maximum extent the country can be made to absorb it, immigration and the Chalutz movement together producing the flow of capital that advances the existing inhabitants’ conditions of life and absorbs new immigrants (PDF p.109).

What the file is

The Internet Archive copy (public-domain access basis as supplied) of the Jewish Agency volume, 114 PDF pages, about 40,513 words as given for this ingest. PDF metadata gives the title Palestine, land settlement, urban development and immigration and the author as Jewish Agency for Israel (as given in the metadata).
The volume contains at least three July 1930 Agency memoranda: Land and Agricultural Development in Palestine (title page at PDF p.3), Urban Development in Palestine (title page at PDF p.59, in part 2) and a memorandum on immigration (in parts 2-3). Part 1 covers PDF p.1-55: the first memorandum’s Chapters I-III, its Annexe 1 (statistical data of Jewish settlements), Annexe 2 (land prices), Annexe 3 (income of a fellah) and the opening of Annexe 4 (Dr. J. W. Evans on water supply north and west of the Dead Sea). Part 2 covers PDF p.56-108: the conclusion of Annexe 4, Annexe 5 (Joseph Weiz, Settlement in the Hill Country), the whole of the second memorandum Urban Development in Palestine (PDF p.59-86, including its unnumbered Dead Sea appendix), and the third memorandum Immigration into Palestine from its title page through Section III’s country sections (1) Poland, (2) Russia, (3) Roumania, (4) Lithuania, (5) Western Europe and the opening of (6) The Yemen (PDF p.87-108). The Urban Development Tables 1-4 are printed separately (Table 4 is footnoted “Printed separately”, PDF p.64) and are not reproduced in the text copy; the figures the tables summarise are stated in the memorandum’s text.
Part 3 covers PDF p.109-114: the conclusion of Section III of Immigration into Palestine — (6) The Yemen concluded and (7) America, with the memorandum’s unheaded closing paragraphs, ending at printed p.107 — followed by the back matter: the printer’s imprint leaf (PDF p.110; The Whitefriars Press, Ltd., London and Tonbridge), blank leaves (PDF p.111-112), a library catalog card bound into this copy (PDF p.113) and the back cover (PDF p.114). The catalog card identifies the volume as the memorandum submitted to Sir John Hope Simpson in July 1930, gives its collation as cover-title, 107, [1] pages, 3 folded tables, 22 cm, and heads its entry “Jewish agency for Israel”, a name the volume itself does not use (see Open questions).
Text quality: the supplied text copy is OCR of a scan and is heavily garbled in tables (Contents, PDF p.5; Annexe 1, PDF p.50-53; the 1928 imports table, PDF p.32), in some figures, and in foreign-language passages. Garbled passages were checked against the original for PDF p.6 (a blank / faint verso), PDF p.44-45 (Beisan tables), PDF p.50 (Annexe 1, Coastal Plain), PDF p.54 (Annexes 2-3) and PDF p.55 (Annexe 4, printed p.53). Figures that remain garbled in both are recorded as garbled in the reading notes. PDF p.109’s final lines and PDF p.113’s catalog card were likewise checked against the original; PDF p.110 is a faint verso, and PDF p.111-112 and p.114 are blank leaves and the back cover in the original.
Printed pagination of the first memorandum runs from printed p.5 (Chapter I, PDF p.7) to printed p.53 (Annexe 4, PDF p.55); Annexe 1 is printed p.48-51 and Annexes 2-3 are printed p.52.

Section by section

Front matter (PDF p.1-6)

Library and scanning marks (PDF p.1-2, School of Theology at Claremont stamp), the title page of Land and Agricultural Development in Palestine (PDF p.3), a blank leaf (PDF p.4), the Contents (PDF p.5, page numbers garbled) and a blank / faint verso (PDF p.6, checked against the original).

Chapter I. General Observations (PDF p.7-12, printed p.5-10)

Modern Jewish agricultural development is dated from the Mikveh Israel agricultural school (1870, established by the Alliance Israélite Universelle as the text names it), then Petach Tikvah (1878), Zichron Jacob (1882) and Rishon-le-Zion (1882), with some 35 further settlements to the Great War. Under the Turkish régime tenure was insecure, purchases being registered in native nominees’ names; the Mandate gave Jewish development a clear status (PDF p.7).
Articles 6 and 11 of the Mandate are read together with the preamble and Article 2 as intending surplus land to be made available, through intensive cultivation, for Jewish close settlement, and Article 11 as directed mainly against large estates let on yearly or biennial contracts, whose owners “have persistently kept agriculture in a backward condition” (PDF p.8). Government steps (cadastral survey, Department of Agriculture, tenant protection and tithe commutation legislation, agricultural credits under consideration) are held insufficient, and the Beisan State lands are cited as a case where Jewish requirements were disregarded (PDF p.8-9).
The Memorandum’s stated object is “to establish that there is land in Palestine at present available for intensive cultivation in a measure sufficient to satisfy the needs of the Jewish National Home, without prejudicing the rights of the existing population” (PDF p.9). It confines itself to the Maritime Plain, the Huleh District, the Beisan Lands and the Lower Jordan Valley — all largely swampy, sandy or alkaline, developable only by large investment — and puts the land available there for new settlement, in addition to land necessary for present cultivators, at about 1,300,000 dunams, 4.8 per cent of Palestine and about 10 per cent of its “cultivable” soil on the Land Department’s definition. The hills (Annexe 5, on Mr. Weiz’s report, room for at least 30,000 additional families), the Negev and Transjordan are expressly left aside (PDF p.9-10).
Three anticipated objections are answered (PDF p.11-12): the fellah is adaptable — “the fellah is intelligent and sober, and needs only instruction and example in order to improve his methods radically” (PDF p.11) — and change will be gradual; future generations are provided for by improvement reserves and by Transjordan (240,000 inhabitants on 40,000 sq. km), the 1921 Palestine Administration Report being quoted that Palestine and Transjordan “are one” economically and geographically; and Jewish National Fund land is extra commercium only in nominal ownership, its system securing small settlers at economic rentals, reserving improvements to the settler and unearned increments to the Fund, and preventing speculation.

Chapter II. Description of Jewish Settlements — A. Maritime Plain (PDF p.13-21, printed p.11-19)

Citrus plantation settlements between Rehovoth and Hederah grew from ten settlements in 1919 (about 5,850 Jewish population, about 115,700 dunams) to 32 in 1930 (25,669 population, about 274,850 dunams) (PDF p.13).
Petach Tikvah is described from a Palestine Jewish Colonization Association account: founded on “Umlabes”, bought in two parcels (about 3,375 and about 11,000 dunams) from a Christian merchant of Jaffa who had obtained the land from Arab debtors; about 40 families of Egyptian “serfs” on the marshy land were dying out; drainage, eucalyptus and Rothschild-assisted improvements followed; the colony now totals about 32,000 dunams, nearly 10,000 souls, and employs 2,300 Jewish and 1,600-2,000 Arab workmen year-round (PDF p.13-14).
Rehovoth (from M. Smelansky, Jewish Colonisation and the Fellah, 1930, p.32): 10,000 dunams of waste land with a score of Bedouin families and one well in 1890; now 2,800 population, 22,000 dunams, 5,000 of orange groves, 50 motor-pumped wells (PDF p.14-15). Hederah (from Botkovsky’s Hebrew pamphlet Hederah, p.1): swamps and malaria in 1891, when no Arab village could remain; now 1,600 population, 800 Jewish and 350 Arab labourers, over 4,300 dunams of orange groves (PDF p.15).
Post-war examples: Benjamina (P.I.C.A., 1922; swamps drained at £P.38,000; former Arab tenants 20-30 families in great poverty; now 381 souls plus 660 workmen); Herzlia (American Zion Commonwealth, 1924; 8,760 dunams bought from a Syrian landowner; drainage £6,637 benefited first the Arabs of Gelil; now 1,337 souls and over £300,000 invested); Pardesanna (P.I.C.A., 1929, on the abandoned Ghabieh village site; 20,000 dunams being settled); Kubeibe (13,000 dunams bought from effendis in 1924, 46 tenants, now four new settlements, 130 settlers, 250 Jewish and 150 Arab workers permanently employed, practically all former Arab inhabitants employed in the Jewish groves); the Kabbara Swamps concession (5,521 dunams, drained by the P.I.C.A., £P.92,000 spent to December 1929 as printed, its items summing to £89,000 — see Open questions); Natania, Magdiel, Gan Haim and Tel Mond, founded on villages’ surplus land, now 6,300 dunams of orange groves; and Wadi Havarith (30,687 dunams bought by the Jewish National Fund at public auction, 80 Bedouin families cultivating 5,000 dunams, room for 1,000 families, the Bedouins offered leases of 5,000 dunams cultivable and 2,000 dunams grazing) (PDF p.15-18).
Progress 1920-1930 in the orange settlements: Jewish workers 800 to 7,140; Arab workers 4,000 to 5,000; Jewish orange-grove area 9,879 to 58,090 dunams (Viteles, Hadar, May 1930); houses 946 to 2,475; 16 agricultural co-operatives and 22 rural credit co-operatives; private capital invested estimated at £P.5,000,000; the three oldest settlements’ tithe and verko rose from under £P.100 a year before settlement to an estimated £P.10,534 (PDF p.18).
Effects on Arab surroundings are argued by contrast (Sawer, 1922, p.5; Smelansky’s pamphlet and Inquiry Commission evidence; P.I.C.A. information): villages far from Jewish settlements are described with clay huts, one well, a wooden plough and average fellah debt of £P.50 per family (Merat-el-Shark, 31 May 1930: Kilkilieh £P.62, Ramin £P.42, Shuwaika £P.57), while villages near Jewish settlements have motor-pumped wells, stone houses, fellah-owned orange groves and Jewish medical help. Arab workmen at Petach Tikvah are said to derive £P.160 a day in aggregate, £P.50,000 a year as printed, and land-sale money was invested in wells, groves, houses and debt settlement; P.I.C.A. figures list Arab groves planted near Petach Tikvah (Sakieh 1,666 dunams by 29 proprietors, with smaller entries partly garbled) and, near Rehovoth and Rishon-le-Zion in 1926-1929, Sarafend el-Harub (32 fellaheen, over 1,036 dunams, plus 1,120 by effendis), Zarnugah (31 inhabitants, 1,176 dunams), Kubeibeh (14 fellaheen, 670 dunams) and Satarich (20 fellaheen, not less than 600 dunams). Jewish colonies buy vegetables from Arab villages (Rehovoth market £P.30-£P.40 daily) and Tel-Aviv has increased that demand; the 1925 Administration Report, p.38, the Palestine Survey Report, p.30, and the High Commissioner report 1920-1925, p.11, are quoted in support (PDF p.18-21).

Chapter II. Description of Jewish Settlements — B. Valley of Esdraelon (Emek) (PDF p.21-26, printed p.19-24)

From one settlement (Merhavia) in 1919 to 31 settlements in 1930, 5,679 Jewish population and 157,416 dunams, besides urban Afuleh (about 1,000 inhabitants). Investments by the Jewish National Fund, the American Zion Commonwealth (£P.406,008) and the Keren Hayesod (£P.605,551) are listed, the Fund’s figure and the total being garbled (PDF p.21-22).
Tenants on lands purchased from the effendis were offered six years’ free use of 100 dunams per family with pre-emption at the purchase price, but, except at Mahlul, preferred cash compensation, paid with Government sanction to nearly £P.28,000 in aggregate. The 688 compensated tenants who left were traced: 437 continuing as farmers (58 as harraths), 89 as shepherds, 54 to the listed other occupations, 37 died, 41 untraced; 154 had become property owners. Deducting deaths, 526 of 651 (81 per cent) remained farmers and shepherds; their harraths, who had no land rights, practically always accompanied them (PDF p.22-23).
The High Commissioner report 1920-1925, pp.34-35, is quoted at length: in 1920 the valley “was a desolation”, with four or five small Arab villages, absentee Syrian landlords, Kishon swamps and malaria; nearly £E.900,000 bought about 51 square miles for the Jewish National Fund and other organisations, twenty villages were founded, swamps drained and malaria made rare. Cantor and Kligler’s 1923 report to the Fund on Nahalal and Nuris drainage is quoted; drainage cost £E.44,362 (PDF p.23-24).
Emek settlements practise mixed farming under the Jewish Agency Experimental Station at Gebata: allotments of 100-150 dunams, cow yields over 3,000 litres and chickens 150 eggs a year in many settlements; 160,000 dunams worked in 1928-1929, 3,000 cows and 125,000 chickens. “Self-supporting” is defined (ordinary farm and living expenditure including renovation, excluding depreciation, loan repayment and rent, covered by farm income); Nahalal, Ginegar, Balfouria and Kfar Yeheskiel qualify. Nahalal’s 1928-1929 produce sold totalled £10,359.806, and the Tenuvah sales co-operative’s 1928-1929 sales totalled £95,780, about 70 per cent from the Emek Jewish settlements (PDF p.24-26).

Chapter III. Future Possibilities of Jewish Settlement — A. Maritime Plain (PDF p.27-37, printed p.25-35)

The Joint Palestine Survey Commission estimates (Report p.22) give the Plain 2,354,500 old dunams of irrigable soil and a grand total of 4,294,500 dunams, but “irrigable” is read as conditional on water being available. Agency experts put water actually available at economic depth, still unirrigated, at 1,117,000 new dunams (595,000 light, 522,000 heavy), plus 125,000 already irrigated — a total irrigable 1,242,000 new dunams — citing Blake’s Geology and Water Resources of Palestine (1928), Goldschmidt’s hydrological report on the Rehovoth-Natania area (500,000 of 750,000 dunams irrigable for oranges) and Range’s Die Kuestenebene Palaestinas (1922) in German with the Memorandum’s translation (PDF p.27-29).
Against Strahorn’s ceiling of 300,000 dunams for irrigated plantation in Palestine (Report p.201), Agency experts argue from his own soil series (Deiran 461,715 and irrigable Beer-Sheba 503,357 dunams) that 500,000 dunams are suitable for citrus, leaving 390,000 dunams still available after the 110,000 already planted, citing also the Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Soils of the Jaffa Sub-District, p.9 (PDF p.29-30).
Present cultivation: not more than about 186,000 dunams wholly uncultivated; heavy soils under Arab cultivation yield 60-70 kg of wheat per dunam and light soils 70 kg of barley. Orange groves are put at £P.16 net income per dunam and £P.8 in wages (the Key to the Settlement of Various Zones in Palestine, p.82 and Table B, p.98), bananas at £P.9 net per dunam (Odlum’s Agricultural Leaflet No.11, p.7), with early vegetables, canning and irrigated forage as further possibilities, and 1928 imports as evidence of a home market. Petach Tikvah (32,000 dunams, nearly 10,000 souls, 2,000 Arab labourers) is contrasted with Sheikh Muwannis and Gelil (36,000 dunams of the same quality, 1,000 souls) (PDF p.30-32).
Farm units: an irrigated unit of 17-22 dunams (8 orange, 7 forage and vegetables, 2 building plot, 5 reserve), adopted at Kfar Malal, Nachlath Yehuda and Beth Chanan (1929), or 15 dunams where all is citrus; the Central Bank for Co-operative Institutions’ figures for Ain Ganim (48 farms, average 18.5 dunams, £P.246 net each) and Nachlat Yehuda (30 farms, average 20.5 dunams, £P.119 net each) are given. At 20-25 dunams per irrigable farm the Plain’s irrigable area gives 50,000 farms, and its 1,268,000 non-irrigable dunams about 9,000 farms at 100 dunams in the north and 200-250 in the south — 59,000 farms in all, against about 22,000 Arab families at present, leaving room for 37,000 additional families. About 2,500 can go on land already in Jewish possession; about 800,000 dunams would need to be bought. The High Commissioner report 1920-1925, p.33, is quoted that colonisation is limited by funds, not by land withheld or by the country being already fully populated. Immediate settlement of 1,000 workers on Fund land near Petach Tikvah, Kfar Saba and Rehovoth, at about £P.375 per family, is under consideration (PDF p.32-34).
Execution at 1,000-2,000 families a year, financed by private funds, the P.I.C.A. and the Agency, would let fellaheen adapt gradually, sell most of their light soil for an aggregate £P.3,000,000-£P.4,000,000, pay debts estimated at £P.50 per family (£P.1,000,000 for 22,000 families) and intensify what they retain — an outcome an Agricultural Bank, lending on present produce at not more than £P.1 per dunam and probably under £P.50 per family, could not match. On the test hypothesis the 22,000 Arab families would average 14 dunams irrigable and 57 dunams non-irrigable, the irrigable alone returning £P.5-£P.20 per dunam against a present £P.50-£P.60 a year from 100 extensive dunams (PDF p.34-37).
For effendi-owned land (estimated at 25-40 per cent of the Plain), where tenants get no share of the purchase price, “the Jewish Agency accepts the principle that on the purchase of land from effendis the economic position of such tenant should not become worse than before the purchase” (PDF p.37): seller or purchaser must provide each tenant 100-150 dunams unirrigated or 15-22 dunams actually irrigated, with a long-term lease proposed for irrigated provision.

Chapter III. Future Possibilities — B. Huleh (PDF p.37-41, printed p.35-39)

The Survey Commission (p.61) is quoted calling the Lake Huleh basin’s 34,000 acres “the largest and potentially most valuable body of agricultural land in Palestine” (PDF p.37). At least 52,000 dunams are swamp; Strahorn (p.154) calls the region “the worst malaria centre in the country” (PDF p.38), while Henriques (p.400) puts water as sufficient for all 150,000 dunams, gravity-fed from the Banias, Ledan, Hasbani and eighteen smaller springs. Henriques’ drainage estimate is somewhat over £1,000,000, or £740,000 without interest — about £21 per dunam, reducible to £P.11 if a further 100,000 dunams of private land are acquired (PDF p.38).
Present cultivation is cereal growing at an estimated 100 kg per dunam, mat making, and stock raising by 400 families sowing not more than 20 dunams each. The population is 27 groups of tent dwellers comprising 2,075 families, with high mortality and hardly any natural increase; about 65,000 dunams belong to Syrian landowners, with 1,085 tenant families paying 37.5 per cent of the crop in rent, and 900 families own about 45,000 dunams (PDF p.38-40).
The Huleh Concession, claimed by Salem Bey under a pre-war Turkish concession replaced by a February 1924 agreement with the Palestine Government that then lapsed (H.M. Government Administration Report for 1927, p.101, quoted), should in the Agency’s view be investigated, and if subsisting revoked, and the State domains placed at the Agency’s disposal under Article 6, the Agency with the P.I.C.A. being the only body likely to find the means; Government leniency (about £4,000 paid this year for alleged rights, fishing rights allowed) and the concessionaires’ earlier offers to sell to the Zionist Organisation at an excessive price are recorded (PDF p.39-40).
After drainage, at 25 dunams a farm on heavy soil (net income £200 per family, Key p.42) and 22 dunams on light soil, the cultivable 140,000 dunams (40,000 heavy, 100,000 light) support about 6,145 farms on the table as printed, and with part reclamation of the Lake of Merom the total room in the Huleh area is estimated at about 4,400 families (PDF p.40-41; the relation between the two figures is held under Open questions).

Chapter III. Future Possibilities — C. Beisan Lands (PDF p.41-45, printed p.39-43)

The section covers the Beisan-Chiftlik, the Semakh-Chiftlik and the Miri Land south of both. The Survey Commission (p.22), bounded by Spring Humra, give gross 207,000 dunams and irrigable 95,000; the Memorandum adds 67,000 dunams south of Humra as printed and Agency experts estimate 140,000 dunams irrigable in all, with a mapped total of 370,970 dunams. Semakh (Henriques, p.401; Strahorn, p.179), Beisan (Henriques, pp.401 and 406; the Commission, p.22; Strahorn’s soil description, p.183, quoted, ending that “the possible crop range is nearly unlimited” (PDF p.43)) and the northern slopes (136,450 dunams non-irrigable) are described in turn (PDF p.41-43).
Irrigation: Lake Tiberias, the Jordan and 35 springs; Agency measurements give spring water fit for irrigation at 12,316 cubic metres an hour, 295,440 cubic metres a day as printed, within Blake’s estimate of about 325,000 cubic metres a day for the ten principal springs (Geology and Water Resources, p.32); spring water suffices for about 55,000 dunams (PDF p.43).
At farm units of 25 dunams on the irrigable area as totalled (the Key, pp.40-42, fixing 23 dunams — see Open questions), 100 dunams on the partly irrigable 108,500 dunams and 150 dunams as totalled on the non-irrigable 136,450 dunams, the lands could hold 6,332 farms. Present cultivators, on the 1922 Census plus 10 per cent, are 2,726 families (Semakh 145; Beisan-Chiftlik irrigated 1,585, non-irrigated 540; Miri Land 456). Not more than 20 per cent of the irrigable Chiftlik land is cultivated, against about 60 per cent of the Miri lands, which is held to show the Chiftlik distribution gave holdings beyond cultivators’ capacity; the only improvement is 800 dunams of bananas bought by Jerusalem and Ramallah effendis. Room for additional settlement is about 3,600 farms, and many present Arab holders are said to have offered to sell part of their land sufficient for that settlement (PDF p.43-45).

Chapter III. Future Possibilities — D. Lower Jordan Valley (PDF p.45-49, printed p.43-47)

Information is scarce: the Survey Commission (pp.21 and 24, quoted) allow only a small irrigable fraction and, following Strahorn’s alkali findings (pp.180-182), estimate 30,000 dunams irrigable (p.22); Ryerson (pp.251, 351 and 362 as cited) is used for the sixty-mile gravity canal, dates as a profitable and alkali-tolerant crop, and water supply as “the decisive limitation at the present time” (PDF p.46). Jericho’s history as “The City of Palms” (George Adam Smith, Historical Geography, 22nd ed., p.22; Sawer, p.7) is set against the Commission.
The defined area (Judean Hills west, Tel-El-Sidra north, the Jordan east, the Dead Sea to Ain Fescha south) has a net cultivable 252,000 dunams (Lower Plain 49,000, Upper Plain 203,000), naturally fertile but mostly alkali-limited, and suited under irrigation to date palms, a good palm netting 500 mils a year (PDF p.46-47).
Springs yield 5,862 cubic metres an hour, with the daily figure given inconsistently as 212,688 and as 216,688 cubic metres (see Open questions), against Blake’s about 350,000 cubic metres a day (Geology and Water Resources, p.51); full settlement would need 857,120 cubic metres a day, the deficit to come from the Jordan. Audebeau Bey, La Vallée du Jourdain (Paris, 1927), pp.28-29, is quoted in French on the two great canals required, and Evans’ January-March 1928 investigation for the Palestine Mining Syndicate is quoted on tapping underground water west of the Dead Sea, the Bukeia Plateau (300-360 metres above the Dead Sea, about 32 sq. km, with phosphatic deposits) being especially suitable; the extract is cited here as Annexe 7 as printed (PDF p.47-48; see Open questions).
At a 21-dunam farm unit based on 9 dunams of date palms, netting £200-£250, the 225,000 dunams left after deducting 10 per cent as printed would hold 10,713 farms and about 3,214,000 date palms. The present native population is 3,100 souls, 775 families (1,200 at Jericho and seven tent-dweller groups of about 1,900), cultivating about 1,500 dunams of plantation and 20,000 of cereals; even the Ain Farah lands (about 75,000 dunams distributed under the Beisan Land Agreement) are mostly waste. Room beyond the existing families is about 9,900 families (PDF p.48-49).

Chapter III. E. Summary (PDF p.49, printed p.47)

Excluding the hills, the Negev and Transjordan: Maritime Plain 37,000 families on 800,000 dunams; Huleh 4,400 on 100,000; Beisan 3,600 on 200,000; Lower Jordan Valley 9,900 on 210,000 dunams (the last figure computed from the stated total); total 54,900 families on 1,310,000 dunams.

Annexe 1. Jewish Agricultural Settlements in Palestine (PDF p.50-53, printed p.48-51)

A table of every settlement by region, with year of establishment, total population, total area in dunams, orange groves in dunams and ownership of land (P.I.C.A., JNF, Private and combinations). Coastal Plain entries 1-38 are recorded in full in the reading notes from the original (PDF p.50); the remaining Coastal entries, the Hills near Jerusalem, the Plain of Jezreel, Lower Galilee and Upper Galilee entries follow at PDF p.51-52, many figures garbled in the text copy.
Recapitulation (PDF p.53): Coastal Plain 29,585 population, 417,983 dunams, 57,958½ dunams of orange groves; Hills near Jerusalem 8 settlements, 280 population as printed here, 18,031 dunams; Plain of Jezreel 31 settlements, 5,679 population, 157,416 dunams; Lower Galilee 2,039 population, 109,764 dunams, 128 orange; Upper Galilee 1,194 population, 63,532 dunams, 117 orange; grand totals as printed 38,777 population, 766,726 dunams, 58,086½ orange groves. The note states most information is based on the 1927 “Census of Jewish Agriculture”, with new data for Zionist settlements and for Maritime Plain settlements marked with an asterisk, and that “the totals given above are therefore not entirely exact” (PDF p.53). Abbreviations: C.G. Co-operative Group, G.G. Girls’ Group, S.S. Smallholders’ settlement.

Annexe 2. Prices of Land in Palestine (PDF p.54, printed p.52)

Read in the original (the text copy is garbled). In 1872 Sursoek [as printed] bought in the Valley of Esdraelon at 8 Turkish piasters (about 72 mils) per dunam. Jewish purchases in the Coastal Zone and Galilee in 1880-1900 ran from frs. 8 to frs. 20 per dunam (320 to 800 mils). The 1905-1929 table runs from Dagania and Kinnereth (1905, 6,000 dunams, frs. 20) and Merhavia (1910, frs. 44) through the £P prices of 1921-1929 — Nahalal, Ginegar and Tel-Adashim at £P.3, Nouris at £P.6.50, Raanana at £P.2, Zarnouga at £P.10, Sheira (Petach-Tikva) at £P.13.50, Nahlat-Yehuda at £P.15 (1928) — to Beisan (1929, 3,778 dunams, £P.4.25). The full table is in the reading notes.

Annexe 3. Income of a Typical Farm of a Fellah (PDF p.54, printed p.52)

Read in the original. On 90 dunams of crops (30 wheat at about 50 kg, £P.12; 10 barley at about 60 kg, £P.3; 10 hersenneh [as printed], £P.4; 30 durrah, £P.6.50; 10 sesame, £P.3), with 800 litres of milk (£P.12), 1,000 eggs (£P.5) and outside labour (£P.12), the total is £P.57.50 — the analysis behind the £P.50-£P.60 annual income from 100 extensive dunams used at PDF p.37.

Annexe 4. Extract from a Provisional Report by Dr. J. W. Evans (PDF p.55, printed p.53; opening only)

Evans’ January-March 1928 report for the Palestine Mining Syndicate on water supply north and west of the Dead Sea: a succession of Jordan Valley wells (Ain Auja, Ain ed-Duk, Ain es-Sultan, Ain Hajla) on a possible fault line; calcium-sulphate springs west of the Dead Sea from Ain el-Jeheiyir and Wadi Kumran to Ras Feshka and Ain Ejid, fed from a pervious bed below the Cenomanian dolomitic limestone and ultimately from rain on the Jerusalem high ground, descending by successive north-south faults; and two ways of making the spring water available, the first being irrigation of the flat western margin of the Dead Sea. The extract continues at PDF p.56, outside this part.

Annexe 4 concluded (PDF p.56, printed p.54)

Evans concludes: tapping the underground water further west, at borings west of the fault line about 7 km west of the Dead Sea cliffs, would probably find good water at not over about 100 metres, with less sulphate of calcium than the margin springs; the Bukeia Plateau “is from 300 to 360 square kilometres, and includes important phosphatic deposits” as printed here (against the main text’s description at PDF p.48 — see Open questions). The phosphates may serve Palestine’s agricultural development and possibly an export trade; the bituminous limestones (over 20 per cent volatile hydrocarbon) are a commercial asset, especially for roadmaking; underground water supplies seem assured. The survey took three months in the two concessions, the extreme south hurried and the western portion scarcely touched. Signed J. W. E., August 29th, 1928.

Annexe 5. Settlement in the Hill Country, by Joseph Weiz (PDF p.57-58, printed p.55-56)

Weiz divides the hill country into the Northern District (1,416,400 metric dunams), the Samaria District (2,797,100) and the Judaea District, totalling 7,144,500 metric dunams. Excluding slopes cultivable only with special installations and the eastward-facing hillsides, and deducting land unsuitable for agriculture (283,280, 699,275 and 1,024,450 dunams as printed), the arable remainder is 5,137,495 dunams. The hill farm can only be based on unirrigated fruit plantation (olive, fig, grape vine, stone-fruits, apples, quinces): his model farm is 30 dunams — 10 olive and fig (£P.40 income), 8 fruit trees (£P.80), 7 grape vines (£P.35), 5 farmyard and vegetable patch (£P.5) — yielding £P.160 a year, or 36 dunams with 20 per cent added for terraces.
Inhabitants: 581 villages with 283,792 souls in the 1922 Census, plus an estimated 29,400 agriculturists in Nazareth, Safed, Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah and Bethlehem — 313,193 agricultural inhabitants in 1922 as printed; at 15 per cent natural increase the present agricultural population is stated as about 342,170, or 68,440 families at five to a family, requiring 2,463,840 dunams at 36 dunams each. Against the arable 5,137,495 dunams this leaves, as printed, 2,614,000 dunams free for colonisation by 74,000 families; even if a further reserve of 50 per cent is made, there would be room for the additional settlement of 35,000 families in the hill country during the next thirty years. Several of these stated figures do not follow from the printed components (see Open questions). Signed Joseph Weiz, Jerusalem, June 25th, 1930. The main text at PDF p.9-10 had put Weiz’s conclusion at “at least 30,000 additional families”.

Second memorandum: Urban Development in Palestine — the census of industry (PDF p.59-66, printed p.59-64)

Title page (PDF p.59); a blank / faint page follows (PDF p.60). The memorandum’s purposes (PDF p.61): to describe the present state of industry, show its development, indicate its prospects and draw conclusions bearing on the relation of industry to immigration. “Industry” throughout means Jewish industry — owners and workmen exclusively or overwhelmingly Jewish — with two doubtful cases named, the Shemen Oil Factory of Haifa (passed to an international oil group with strong British participation; management and labour remained Jewish) and the Nur Match Factory of Acre (passed, as far as can be ascertained, under the Swedish Trust’s control); the Maspero Cigarette Factory is expressly excluded.
The evidence is the Statistical Department’s March 1930 census of Jewish industry: exact data from 2,276 enterprises, estimates for 12 more (including the Palestine Electric Corporation, the Nesher Cement Factory, the Grands Moulins de Palestine and the Dead Sea Works, mostly on the Government Census of 1928). The 2,276 census enterprises employed 9,362 persons, with a wage-bill of £476,452, raw materials of £904,881, production of £1,635,462 and invested capital of £998,904. By size: Group A (artisans, under 5 persons) 1,725 enterprises, 3,200 persons, £134,563 capital; Group B (5-9 workmen) 418 enterprises, 2,626 persons, £274,915 capital; Group C (over 10 men, wholesale market) 133 enterprises, 3,536 persons, £589,426 capital — Group C is 6 per cent of enterprises but 38 per cent of persons employed, 50 per cent of raw materials and 59 per cent of capital. Group C by category: Food 24, Metallurgical 21, Printing 20, Stone and Cement 19, Wood 15, Textile 12, Leather 10, Miscellaneous 4, Chemical 3, Electrical 3, Clothing 2. In Group C, Tel-Aviv holds 60 per cent of enterprises, 80 per cent of invested capital and 71 per cent of production.
Growth (Table 4, whose totals deviate slightly from Tables 1-2, as the memorandum itself notes): of 137 Group C enterprises now existing, 24 existed in 1919, 50 were created in 1920-24, 56 in 1925-1929, 3 in 1930 and 4 in a period not investigated; enterprises that did not survive are automatically excluded. Adding the estimated enterprises (the seven estimated on the 1928 Government Census, five more on reliable information including the Jordan Electrical Works and the Dead Sea Works, and over 400 village enterprises) gives final totals: 2,688 enterprises, 11,349 persons employed, £620,352 wages as printed, £1,001,981 raw materials, £2,119,462 production and £3,361,904 capital invested, of which £1,315,000 is capital of the Palestine Electric Corporation and the Dead Sea Works, which contribute nothing to the raw-material and production figures. Forty-two enterprises, with 705 persons, are conducted on a co-operative basis. Two of the printed totals do not follow from their printed components (see Open questions).

Urban Development — who lives on industry (PDF p.67-70, printed p.65-68)

Building (1,887) and Transport (1,492) were excluded from the Industrial Census; the General Census of Jewish workmen gives their figures, bringing those employed in industry in the broader sense to 14,728. From the Workmen’s Census (family circumstances known for 17,404 male and 5,580 female workers), applying the town dwellers’ 73/27 sex proportion gives 10,700 men and 4,000 women in industry; about half the male workers are married, giving 5,350 married male industrial workers, who at 3.4 dependants per head (footnote: 7,273 families count 32,400 souls, almost exactly 4.4 per family) have 18,200 dependants. Total persons living on industry: 32,900, or say 33,000. At the beginning of the post-war period not more than a very few thousand can have lived on industry, so out of the post-war increase of about 100,000 souls at least 30,000, or 30 per cent, live directly on industry.
Earlier censuses, adjusted: 4,694 workers in 1925 and 5,711 in 1926 (Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1929, p.161), most of Group A apparently excluded; adding some 2,000 gives a rough 1925-26 estimate of about 7,000 workers against 11,300 at present as printed in this section. The Government Industry Census of 1928 showed 17,955 workers including 5,547 “owners”; Jews are understood to account for about 55 per cent of persons employed in the towns, about 8,000 Jewish persons in industry in 1928. The summary at PDF p.69 gives 1925-26 as 7,000 and 1930 as 11,000 (see Open questions). The Jaffa Electric Company’s sales of electric energy to industry in Tel-Aviv, 1924-1929, are tabulated by group as an index of growth — Foodstuffs from 24,900 to 148,575 kWh, Textiles from 7,530 to 188,084, Mechanical Workshops from 2,480 to 47,545, Printing and Stationery from 2,550 to 46,913 — and are held to show constant development and that the so-called crisis of 1926 scarcely affected industry.
The “crisis” argument: the 1926-27 crisis was caused not by a breakdown of the Jewish community’s economic structure but, suddenly, by an economic breakdown in Poland, which made it impossible for those years’ immigrants to liquidate their Polish investments; building in Tel-Aviv was interrupted and unemployment followed, while outside Tel-Aviv planting went on, industry grew and prospered, and probably some 3,000 of the unemployed were absorbed by industry. The drought and cattle plague of 1926 and the earthquakes of 1927 also played their part.

Urban Development — industry and the Arab population (PDF p.71-73, printed p.69-71)

The larger concerns (Nesher, Atlit Salt Works, Dead Sea Works, Electricity Works, Nur Matches, etc.) employ at least 350 to 400 Arab workmen between them, and the Jewish building industry at least 400 to 500. On harm to Arab interests: two complaints might be imagined — cheap immigrant labour undercutting indigenous labour (held to be beyond discussion, no room for it), and immigrant industrialists out-competing indigenous industrialists (even if justified, held to be no legitimate reason to debar Jews from building up a foundation of national prosperity; nothing in the Balfour Declaration proviso, quoted, requires it). In fact, at the beginning of the post-war period there existed only one Arab industry of real importance, the soap industry of Nablus and Jaffa, with which Jews have not competed to any measurable degree (footnote: Arab factories produce only unperfumed Nablusi laundry soap; only Shemen offers very modest competition there). Competition in ordinary artisan trades such as tailoring and shoemaking is acknowledged, Jewish artisans having in general found work within the growing Jewish community.

Urban Development — prospects: power, raw materials, markets, men (PDF p.73-81, printed p.71-79)

Jewish industry has filled, or just begun to fill, an economic vacuum whose extent is not yet known: “From the point of view of industry the whole talk of the absorptive capacity of the country is out of place and should be disposed of once and for all” (PDF p.73). Jewish industry does not cater primarily for 600,000 Arabs, three-quarters of them poor peasants; Arab consumption is at present very secondary, proved by the months-long boycott of Jewish products after the riots having not materially affected industry. It looks first to the Jewish community itself and to export: “it is before all things Jewish immigration that creates the home market and conquers the foreign market” (PDF p.74).
Against passive immigration policy: as a rule the immigrant has to create his own employment (France in the first post-war years, which absorbed hundreds of thousands of Polish and Italian labourers, is the exception); “An active immigration policy has to be a creative policy”, and a Government that has undertaken to encourage the building of a National Home must actively encourage immigration, not merely permit it. Future possibilities must therefore be an essential factor in immigration policy.
Power: the nineteenth-century contention that industry depends on proximity of coalmines is obsolete (Holland and Italy thrived on imported coal; liquid fuel and hydraulic power have disposed of it). The Jordan Works at maximum planned development total about 100,000 h.p. (footnote: the first installation is calculated at 24,000 h.p., starting with 6,000 h.p. turbines; the Lower Jordan is not included), against 3,300 h.p. of machinery at the Jaffa and Haifa Power Houses covering present industrial consumption — a reserve for many times the present industry, which feeds 33,000 people directly.
Raw materials: proximity is only one factor and not a decisive one — Lancashire cotton, Dutch cigars from Brazil and Sumatra tobacco, Egyptian cigarettes from Macedonian tobacco, Swiss watches and Amsterdam and Antwerp diamonds are the examples; the diamond industry in both cities, particularly Amsterdam, is specifically Jewish, while efforts at Johannesburg near the mines met indifferent success. Palestine’s own products (fruit-canning, dairy, medicinal herbs and flowers, oil plants, wool, skins, stone and marble, possibly petroleum, and the Dead Sea store-house) may base industries, but “under no circumstances can it be admitted that the extent of the possibilities of Jewish industries in Palestine is in any way limited or even indicated by the raw materials which the country produces” (PDF p.77).
Markets: proximity is an advantage chiefly through facility of intercourse, not freight (bricks against typewriters). Palestine is nearer to Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Iraq and Persia than any other industrial country — orders reach Tel-Aviv from Syria in one or two days against seven or eight to Europe — and these markets are “important enough to keep a little Oriental Belgium busy” (PDF p.78).
The human factor is decisive: Jews prepared to immigrate with capital, business experience and, preferably, knowledge of a particular industry, and other Jews to supply skilled and unskilled labour. Illustrations: the Polish sock-and-stockings factory that failed under inexperienced owners and succeeded under a Russian Jewish lifelong specialist; artificial teeth, made in Tel-Aviv by over thirty workers and exported mainly to England on the strength of one immigrant manufacturer’s American experience; Polish leather workers making hand-bags in Tel-Aviv; the most important Lodz textile manufacturer, who in spring 1929 investigated transferring his establishments, reached a favourable conclusion, and was suspended by the August riots; Mr. Rutenberg and the Jordan Electricity Scheme; Mr. Michel Pollak and the Nesher Cement Factory; the Shemen founders. Industries named as having a future: clothing (possibly tens of thousands of people), tobacco, textiles, preserved fruits and vegetables, Hebrew book and printing, and the Dead Sea chemical industry. The tourist industry is also named, with Haifa’s port meeting the largest Mediterranean cruise steamers.

Urban Development — building, housing and summary (PDF p.82-86, printed p.80-84)

Industry gives indirect employment to many more than the 33,000 who live on it directly; trade and the liberal professions live on the producers. Urban settlement need not draw on industry alone: the building industry has known only one unemployment period, 1926-1927. The General Mortgage Bank’s summer 1927 survey found only 516 of 20,000 Tel-Aviv rooms uninhabited, or 2½ per cent as printed; Tel-Aviv still counts about 771 barracks housing about 3,745 people. Supposing 15,000 immigrants in a year, they would require 6,000 or 7,000 rooms costing at least £700,000 to build, including not less than £450,000 wages — employment for about 5,000 men and, on the §19 proportions, about 13,500 persons living directly on building — all without displacing Arab labour.
Building investment, quoted from the National Council (Vaad Leumi) memorandum to the Mandates Commission: Government reports give, for 1924-28, Tel-Aviv £2,224,000, Jerusalem £1,558,000, Haifa £498,700, Jaffa £458,000, Tiberias £124,000 and Safed £11,300; assuming Jewish participation in the mixed cities only in proportion to the Jewish population, the Jewish contribution is given as Jerusalem £953,000, Tel-Aviv £2,224,000, Jaffa £77,800, Tiberias £82,800 and Safed £3,800, “making a total of £3,541,000” — the listed items sum to £3,341,400 and no Haifa item is listed (see Open questions) — against £600,000 to £700,000 in 1921-23. With the colonies (1,469 private houses and 83 public buildings built in 1919-29 in the thirty-four plantation colonies alone; 107 colonies in all) and 1929 (over £300,000), the Jewish community has invested well over £5,000,000 in house building in ten years. Jewish building workmen now number less than 2,000 (§17 gives Building 1,887), so with regular immigration “the question of unemployment cannot arise”. Housing has been left entirely to private enterprise, the Palestine Government standing alone among European governments in accepting no duty in the matter.
Summary (PDF p.85-86): Jewish industry is of post-war growth, fairly well established (no unemployment, no failures of importance for several years, a fierce boycott passed without appreciable harm), employs directly 14,700 people forming with dependants a population of 33,000, has absorbed about one-third of post-war immigration, has harmed the Arab population in no way, and has filled part of an economic vacuum without taking any occupation from Arabs. Its growth depends only on suitable men and capital coming in and being encouraged and protected; absorptive capacity from the point of view of industry depends only on Jewish capitalists’ willingness and ability and Jewish labour’s coming to work. “The immigration policy of the Government of Palestine must be creative not contemplative, active not passive, bold not timid” (PDF p.86).
Dead Sea appendix (PDF p.86): Palestine Potash Limited started its activities on January 1st, 1930; 165 workmen are engaged at the Dead Sea Works, to increase within three months when construction of the Potash Factory starts. The present scheme is for 10,000 tons of Potassium Chloride of 80 per cent purity, to be intensified up to 100,000 tons if the first plant proves satisfactory; the salts also contain Magnesium Chloride, Natrium Chloride and Bromine, giving a basis for a chemical industry (Magnesium Chloride, Caustic Soda, Chlorine and other compounds) and, through fertilisers and the opening of the Jordan Valley, a benefit to agriculture.

Third memorandum: Immigration into Palestine — I. General (PDF p.87-95, printed p.87-93)

Title page (PDF p.87) and Contents (PDF p.88): I. General; II. Immigration Machinery and Procedure (a) Palestine Offices and Immigration Offices, (b) Training of Immigrants, (c) Selection of Immigrants, (d) Medical Examination of Immigrants, (e) Reception in Palestine, (f) Immigration of Non-Labour Categories; III. Immigration in Relation to the Jewish Situation in the Diaspora.
The Mandate references are Article 2 and Article 6 (quoted), and the 1922 statement of policy: the Jewish people “should know that it is in Palestine as of right”, and its community must be able to increase by immigration, which cannot exceed “the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals”. The Zionist Executive accepted those principles but holds it is the Agency’s right and privilege to increase the country’s capacity to absorb new settlers, entitled to the Mandatory’s active co-operation, not only its support.
The Palestine Commission of Enquiry allegation (from which Mr. Snell dissents), that there is incontestable evidence of a serious departure by the Jewish authorities from the doctrine accepted by the Zionist Organisation in 1922 that “immigration should be regulated by the economic capacity of Palestine to absorb new arrivals”, is answered: in 1926-1927, as today, the final word in fixing numbers rested with the Palestine Administration, whose responsibility for any miscalculation was not less; since then immigration has resumed and Jewish unemployment has been reduced almost to vanishing point; in 1920-1930 there was one crisis, overcome almost exclusively by the Jews’ own efforts, during which no single Jew became a direct charge on public funds (citing the Government’s 1927 League of Nations report, p.96).
Subject to Government control of certificates and entry, the Agency deals with all steps of Jewish immigration — labour-market investigation, selection and training abroad, distribution of certificates among countries and allocation to individuals, transport, and finding employment in town and country — assisted by Agency institutions and advisory bodies of every party and tendency. Admission is determined by the country’s economic development; the schedules are submitted to the Government twice a year after examining labour-market prospects and openings on new development works, the factors being new investments by colonising and credit institutions, new agricultural undertakings, new undertakings in industry, construction and commerce, and Government works allowing a fair share of Jewish labour. Protection against unforeseen events (the Polish setback of 1925-26; breakdown of public security; earthquake and drought in 1927) is the Agency’s legal one-year maintenance guarantee for every immigrant and its moral responsibility to the Jewish people — safeguards held sufficient to justify greater freedom for the Agency in regulating immigration.
Non-prejudice argument: Jewish immigration, based on opportunities for Jewish immigrants, cannot prejudice Arab workers — in agriculture (intensive enterprise; land prices and tenant compensation raise the fellah’s income), industry (supplying the growing Jewish population and winning export markets), building and public works (new work for Jewish needs), and Government works (a fair share of expanding works financed increasingly from Jewish revenues, not replacement of Arabs). The new Jewish worker does not replace an Arab worker, his labour costs and conditions being far above the Arab worker’s. Suspension of immigration for political reasons would reduce Arab incomes (produce consumption, transport, customs revenue, porters, stevedores and lightermen); Arab unemployment, if any, has not been caused by Jewish immigration, and without immigration several thousand Arabs would lose employment; Jewish capital would not be available to employ Arabs without Jewish settlement.
Public works figures (table, PDF p.94, read in the original): expenditure July 1st, 1920 to December 31st, 1928 totalled £P.2,534,825 (Recurrent £973,710, Extraordinary £736,726, Other Departmental Votes £824,189), of which work executed by Jewish labour was £346,610 — 178,360 of it in 1921-22 alone. The note adds that Jewish labour’s percentage dropped, till in 1925 it was only 1½ per cent (read in the original) against 6 per cent in 1922, reaching its lowest point in 1926; in the five years April 1922-March 1927, of £1,226,000 spent on public works only £32,000, less than 3 per cent, was the share allowed to Jewish labour. Relief works were mostly already on the Government programme, the Jaffa-Petach-Tikvah road chief among them.
The building trades: 4,500 Jewish labourers were engaged at the end of 1926; in the depression a considerable proportion were absorbed in the plantation settlements and industry, and a number left the country; today only about 2,500 Jewish labourers are working in the building trades (against the Urban Development figures — see Open questions). Jerusalem building has been stimulated since the August riots by the desire to move out of the Old City; Haifa’s Jewish population has increased by 12,000 in nine years, with 977 Jewish buildings erected; Tel-Aviv permits for 1914-1927 aggregated £2,114,419 as printed, with about £100,000 spent in 1929 and £15,000 a month in the first five months of 1930.

Immigration — II. Immigration Machinery and Procedure (PDF p.96-104, printed p.94-102)

A. Machinery: the Agency’s status is defined by the Immigration Ordinance, 1925, quoted: Regulation 7.(4) makes it lawful for the Palestine Zionist Executive to notify the Chief Immigration Officer (in the form in Schedule 5) of a reasonable prospect of employing named or unnamed persons and to apply for their entry, with a guarantee to maintain them for not less than one year; Regulation 8 provides for Labour Schedules prepared by the Chief Immigration Officer after considering the Executive’s proposals, one for each successive six months ending September 30th and March 31st, fixing the maximum Category C certificates by trade, industry and calling, and laid before the High Commissioner for written approval. The Jerusalem Immigration Department works through (1) Palestine Offices abroad — the important ones at Warsaw, Berlin, Kovno, Riga, Bucharest and Aden, with Port Offices at Trieste and Constanza — which supply information, select and approve immigrants, register them and arrange visas and documents, represent the Agency before consuls and governments, conduct medical examinations, assist with transfer of property and money and with the journey (transport governed by contracts with the steamship companies; special trains or carriages; accompaniment to the port and sometimes to Palestine), each with an advisory Palestine Committee of General Zionists, Mizrachi, the Labour parties and HeHalutz, whose director is a member; (2) Immigration Offices in the ports (Jaffa-Tel-Aviv and Haifa), which meet immigrants, intervene when the Port Officer detains them, consult employment institutions, and assist on reception, with hostels at Jaffa and Haifa where immigrants stay a few days, recovering from the inoculations given on arrival; and (3) an advisory Immigration Board of Palestinian Jews — farmers, industrialists, labourers, and Sephardi and Yemenite community representatives — appointed on the recommendation of the Va’ad Leumi, advising especially on the Labour Schedule and distribution of certificates.
B. Training abroad: the HeHalutz organisation trains the youth for work in Palestine in all emigration countries, in two main groups (Mizrachi and General Zionists) and a “Trumpeldor” organisation, financially supported and periodically inspected by the Immigration Department and supervised by the Palestine Offices. Methods: farms and agricultural groups, trade schools and classes, labour groups in seasonal employment, and individual apprenticeship; cultural work (Hebrew courses, historical geography and natural history of Palestine) has an important place. Agricultural training of two years is usually required, one year in special cases. A recent census gives 4,003 Chalutzim in training (table read in the original, PDF p.100): Poland 1,360, Galicia 775, Roumania 368, Germany 335, Lithuania 211, Czecho-Slovakia 161, Latvia 150, Russia (estimate) 500, Austria 70, Holland 32, France 23, Bulgaria 18 — items summing to the stated total 4,003 (computed). Candidates are drawn from the Jewish Youth Organisations; places being far fewer than applicants, only the best are admitted. Experts and experienced Palestinian agriculturists are sent abroad to inspect and guide the training.
C. Selection: the Palestine Offices’ first and paramount responsibility, on the Immigration Department’s periodical instructions after consultation with the Immigration Board, governed by (i) the labour needs in the Schedule approved by the High Commissioner; (ii) general but not exclusive priority for Hechalutz-trained candidates with a fair knowledge of Hebrew; (iii) individual selection of skilled workers for specific trades; (iv) persons applied for by relatives in Palestine able to provide for their establishment. Registered candidates greatly exceed the certificates available.
D. Medical examination: qualification for hard physical work is a main condition of approval. Three examinations — on registration, immediately before departure, and on arrival (the third by the Medical Officer of the Kupat-Cholim, in addition to the Palestine Government Medical Officer’s examination). Every Labour Schedule immigrant is automatically admitted to the Kupat-Cholim on the Agency’s payment of a registration fee; the physicians’ standing instructions were prepared by the Va’ad Habriuth (Health Committee) of the Jewish Agency.
E. Reception and establishment: arrivals are met at Haifa and Jaffa, stay a few days in the hostels, and are distributed to work in accordance with the labour needs on which the Schedule was based, with the assistance of the labour exchange of the General Federation of Labour and of the Mizrachi and Yemenite Workers’ Organisations. Facilities: port and quarantine assistance, hostel maintenance, loans for tools and equipment, Kupat-Cholim registration and maintenance for illness contracted en route, travel expenses to the place of work, erection of accommodation (barracks and tents), and mosquito curtains in malarial places; current-year attention has gone to hygienic housing, on a physicians’ and engineers’ commission report, and to anti-malaria arrangements in the Samaria workers’ camps.
F. Non-labour categories: the Department also assists categories entering outside the Labour Schedule and not under the Agency’s responsibility — (a) persons with independent means, including capitalists (£P.1,000 minimum), members of liberal professions (£P.500) and persons skilled in trade or craft (£P.250); (b) persons of religious occupation and (c) students, whose maintenance is assured; (d) dependents applied for by relatives able to maintain them. About 9,000 capitalists (single men and heads of families only; figure confirmed by the Chief Immigration Officer) entered in the past ten years; on the former £500 minimum, assuming half possessed only the minimum and half an average of £750, the capital they introduced is estimated at £P.5,625,000 (read in the original, PDF p.103). The recent increase of the minimum to £1,000, fixed against the £500 of the September 1925 Regulations, is held prejudicial to immigration and to Palestine’s development, and a return to £500 is urged. A note refers to pp.80-93 of the Agency’s May 1930 Memorandum on the Shaw Commission’s Report, submitted to the League of Nations.

Immigration — III. The Jewish Situation in the Diaspora (PDF p.105-108, printed p.103-106)

Introduction: through sixty generations of the Dispersion the Jewish nation never relinquished its connection with Palestine; in the last two generations the efforts took systematic form as the Hechalutz movement, initiated fifty years ago, as printed, by the “Bilu” — the initials of “House of Israel, Arise and let us go!” — which laid the foundation of Rishon-le-Zion and Gederah. Immigration in the past ten years has attained 100,000, the principal contributors being Poland, Russia, Roumania, Lithuania, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia and the Yemen.
(1) Poland (PDF p.106): about 3,000,000 Jews, mostly in commerce, industry and handicraft; the post-war Republic closed the Russian interior markets their trade had served, while Poles, with State support and the co-operative movement, moved to eject Jews from their former economic positions — ruin, making large-scale immigration imperative, especially for youth aspiring to manual labour. About 45,000 Jews emigrated from Poland in the past decade, stated as approximately 40 per cent of the total (see Open questions); a large proportion were persons of independent means, and the majority of the younger Chalutzim absorbed in Palestine came from Poland.
(2) Russia (PDF p.106-107): about 2,600,000 Jews; under the Soviet régime a considerable proportion have no legal vocation and cannot be absorbed in productive occupations — “hopeless economic ruin”; Zionism and Jewish nationalism are persecuted as counter-revolutionary, and the Jewish religion is singled out for “malicious and savage persecution”. Emigration is the only alternative to economic extinction and “racial and moral degeneration”. Since 1919, 27,000 Jews have entered Palestine from Russia, about 2,000 of them from exile in Siberia and Asiatic Russia, many having been confined under barbarous conditions for Zionist professions or Chalutz organising; the one favour the Soviet Government sometimes grants is permission to leave for Palestine, as synonymous with perpetual banishment.
(3) Roumania (PDF p.107): the Jewish population rose with the annexations of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania to 960,000; Bessarabian Jews are cut off from their Russian hinterland, and political depression and periodical anti-semitic excesses are further factors. Immigrants from Roumania in the period number 5,000, mostly young Chalutzim, including Russian refugees who crossed the frontier.
(4) Lithuania (PDF p.107-108): about 150,000 Jews; the Palestine movement is strong out of all proportion; government policy, determined by popular anti-semitism, endeavours to squeeze Jews out of the country’s economic life. Stimulated by Hebraic idealism and critical conditions, 3,500 immigrants entered Palestine in the last ten years.
(5) Western Europe (Germany, etc.) (PDF p.108): the movement’s strength is among the younger generation — secondary-school and academic graduates — including many children of well-to-do parents, imbued with turning the Jewish people from commerce and the liberal professions to labour on the soil, in industry and in construction; about 5,000 immigrants in the period, mostly absorbed in agricultural labour after training abroad.
(6) The Yemen, opening (PDF p.108): a Moslem kingdom under the Imam’s autocratic rule, its interior virtually closed to Europeans; the Jewish community, dating to pre-Islamic times, is estimated at 40,000 to 60,000 souls, deprived of all civil rights, under a decree that orphan minors become the Imam’s wards and must adopt Islam, enforced more rigorously in recent years. Yemenite Jews are mostly skilled handicraft workers or agriculturists, readily assimilated to Palestinian conditions; the journey to the Aden coast takes twenty days (read in the original, where a red library stamp partly obscures the line) and is fraught with brigandage and murder, and by it some 2,000 Yemenite Jews — the sentence completes at PDF p.109.

Immigration — III concluded, and back matter (PDF p.109-114, printed p.107 and unnumbered)

(6) The Yemen concluded (PDF p.109): the 2,000 Yemenite Jews who entered by the Aden route since the war include no fewer than 600 in the past year, their departure largely “simulated” as printed (for stimulated; checked against the original — see Open questions) by fear of the decree on the forcible conversion of orphan children. They mostly work as agricultural labourers in the older colonies, some settled separately in agricultural settlements of their own with the Agency’s help.
(7) America (PDF p.109): the United States, and to a less extent Canada, have contributed through capitalist immigrants who brought considerable sums for investment in agriculture and industry; latterly a Chalutz movement has also appeared among the Jewish youth of both countries, seeking to take part in the upbuilding on a new foundation of work. Both categories together, some 1,500 immigrants have entered Palestine from North America since the war.
Closing paragraphs (PDF p.109): about 16 million Jews are scattered over the globe; although a considerable number have reached the highest positions in science, letters, politics and finance, the Jewish people as a whole is one of the poorest of peoples and its masses live in extreme economic insecurity, and in many countries in political and social depression threatening cultural and moral degeneration. The Zionist aspiration for a National Home is “a light which always burns” for an ever-increasing number; without it, for vast numbers in Eastern Europe and the Yemen, “there would be darkness complete”. Only a proportion can settle, but immigration proceeding to the maximum extent the country can be made to absorb it gives all Jews strength and hope, and produces a regular output of effort and sacrifice, since immigration and the Chalutz movement are the chief factors producing the flow of capital that creates new possibilities of development — advancing the conditions of life of the existing inhabitants and settling and absorbing new immigrants.
Back matter (PDF p.110-114, read in the original): the printer’s imprint of The Whitefriars Press, Ltd., London and Tonbridge, on a faint verso carrying the School of Theology at Claremont library stamp (PDF p.110); blank leaves (PDF p.111-112); a library catalog card bound into this copy, identifying the volume as a memorandum submitted to Sir John Hope Simpson, C.I.E., special commissioner of His Majesty’s Government, July 1930, London, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1930, cover-title, 107, [1] pages, 3 folded tables, 22 cm, each part with a special title page, under the subjects Palestine economic conditions, Jews in Palestine, agricultural colonies, Palestine industries and Palestine emigration and immigration (PDF p.113); and the back cover (PDF p.114).

Key passages

“to establish that there is land in Palestine at present available for intensive cultivation in a measure sufficient to satisfy the needs of the Jewish National Home, without prejudicing the rights of the existing population” (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.9)
“the fellah is intelligent and sober, and needs only instruction and example in order to improve his methods radically” (PDF p.11)
“the Jewish Agency accepts the principle that on the purchase of land from effendis the economic position of such tenant should not become worse than before the purchase” (PDF p.37)
“The largest and potentially most valuable body of agricultural land in Palestine is 34,000 acres in the basin o Lake Huleh, which drainage would make available for irrigation farming” (Survey Commission, p.61, as quoted at PDF p.37; “basin o” as printed in the original, checked against it — the “f” of “of” is missing in print)
“From the point of view of industry the whole talk of the absorptive capacity of the country is out of place and should be disposed of once and for all” (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.73)
“it is before all things Jewish immigration that creates the home market and conquers the foreign market” (PDF p.74)
“The immigration policy of the Government of Palestine must be creative not contemplative, active not passive, bold not timid” (PDF p.86)
“immigration should be regulated by the economic capacity of Palestine to absorb new arrivals” (the doctrine of 1922 in the Palestine Commission of Enquiry allegation, as quoted at PDF p.89-90; Mr. Snell dissenting)
“The Zionist aspiration for a National Home in Palestine is for an ever-increasing number of Jews a light which always burns” (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.109)

Evidence the work relies on

The Mandate, Articles 2, 6 and 11 and the preamble, as quoted and read at PDF p.7-8.
The Joint Palestine Survey Commission Report (the Experts’ Report), cited throughout: Maritime Plain areas and irrigation (pp.20, 22, 25), Huleh (pp.24, 61, 154), Beisan and Semakh (p.22), Lower Jordan Valley (pp.21, 22, 24) and the contributions of Strahorn (pp.179, 183, 200-201), Henriques (pp.400, 401, 406) and Ryerson (pp.251, 351, 362 as cited).
Blake, Report on Geology and Water Resources of Palestine (1928), pp.32 and 51; Goldschmidt’s hydrological inquiry on the Maritime Plain; Range, Die Kuestenebene Palaestinas (Berlin, 1922), pp.13-14.
The Jewish Agency experts’ own surveys of the Coastal Plain, the Beisan map computation and spring measurements, and the Agency’s Key to the Settlement of Various Zones in Palestine (pp.40-42, 82, 98, 111 as cited).
Official reports quoted: Report of the High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine 1920-1925, pp.11, 33, 34-35; Annual Report on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for 1925, p.38, and for 1927, p.101; Palestine Administration Report for 1921, p.24; the Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Soils of the Jaffa Sub-District, p.9; the 1922 Census for Beisan and Huleh populations and the 1927 “Census of Jewish Agriculture” for Annexe 1.
Settlement accounts supplied by the P.I.C.A. (Petach Tikvah, the Kabbara drainage accounts, Arab groves near Petach Tikvah, Rehovoth and Rishon-le-Zion), the American Zion Commonwealth (Herzlia), Smelansky’s Jewish Colonisation and the Fellah (1930) and his Inquiry Commission evidence, Botkovsky’s Hederah, Sawer’s Review of the Agricultural Situation in Palestine (1922), Viteles in Hadar (May 1930), the Central Bank for Co-operative Institutions’ smallholder investigation, Cantor and Kligler’s 1923 drainage report to the Jewish National Fund, Odlum’s banana leaflet, Audebeau Bey’s La Vallée du Jourdain (Paris, 1927), George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography (22nd ed.), and Evans’ provisional report for the Palestine Mining Syndicate (Annexe 4).
The Statistical Department of the Jewish Agency’s census of Jewish industry, March 1930 (2,276 enterprises with exact data, 12 estimated), and its Tables 1-4 (printed separately), on which the Urban Development figures rest; the Government Census of Industry, 1928, used for the estimates and for 1928 comparison; the Jewish Agency’s General Census of Jewish workmen and Workers’ (Workmen’s) Census, used for the Building and Transport figures and the dependants estimate.
Jaffa Electric Company of Tel-Aviv, sales of electric energy to industry by group, 1924-1929; the General Mortgage Bank for Palestine’s 1927 survey of empty lodgings in Tel-Aviv; Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1929 (Keren Hayesod), pp.161 and 257; the National Council (Vaad Leumi) memorandum to the Mandates Commission, quoted for building investment 1924-28.
The Immigration Ordinance, 1925, Regulations 7.(4) and 8, as quoted at PDF p.96; the statement of policy of 1922; the Palestine Commission of Enquiry (Shaw Commission) report allegation quoted at PDF p.89-90; the Report of His Britannic Majesty’s Government to the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for 1927, p.96; Palestine Government public-works reports 1921-28 and the Public Works Department administration reports, tabulated at PDF p.94; the Jewish Agency’s own May 1930 Memorandum on the Shaw Commission report, pp.80-93, referred to at PDF p.104.
Joseph Weiz’s report on hill-country settlement (Annexe 5), signed Jerusalem, June 25th, 1930, and Evans’ provisional report (Annexe 4), dated August 29th, 1928.
For the volume’s own bibliographic identification, a library catalog card bound into this copy (PDF p.113, read in the original), which records it as a memorandum submitted to Sir John Hope Simpson in July 1930 and gives its collation and subjects, and the printer’s imprint of The Whitefriars Press, Ltd., London and Tonbridge (PDF p.110). The Diaspora survey’s closing country figures and its worldwide total of about 16 million Jews (PDF p.109) are given without a cited source in the pages read.

Analysis

The Memorandum is an advocacy document by the Jewish Agency addressed to the Mandate’s own terms: it accepts Articles 6 and 11 as its premises, defines its task as proving available land without prejudice to the existing population, and builds the proof from its own experts’ surveys, settlement accounts supplied by the settlement agencies themselves, and selective quotation of official and Survey Commission material, including passages (Strahorn on citrus, the Survey Commission on Jordan Valley irrigation) whose conclusions it argues against.
Its method is comparative and arithmetic: existing intensive settlements are set against neighbouring extensive cultivation at similar scale (Petach Tikvah against Sheikh Muwannis and Gelil), farm-unit figures are multiplied over regional areas to yield family totals, and present cultivators are subtracted. Several of its stated totals do not follow from its own printed figures; every such case found in this part is held under Open questions rather than resolved.
The Arab cultivator appears in two distinct positions: the village owner, who is expected to sell surplus (mainly light) soil, pay debts averaging £P.50 a family and intensify the rest, and the effendi’s tenant, who receives no share of a sale price and for whom the Memorandum accepts a no-worse-off principle with provision of land by seller or purchaser. Transjordan is treated as a reserve for Palestine’s excess population.
Limits visible in this part: the settlement and grove statistics rest largely on the 1927 Census of Jewish Agriculture and on Agency and P.I.C.A. material, with the Annexe 1 note conceding its totals are not entirely exact; several regional figures (Huleh areas, Beisan government estimates, the Emek investment figures) are garbled in the text copy and could not all be recovered from the original in this part.
The Urban Development memorandum extends the first memorandum’s method to industry: a census taken by the Agency’s own Statistical Department supplies the figures, enterprises that failed are automatically excluded from the growth account (as the memorandum itself notes), and the conclusion — that absorptive capacity is no proper limit, because immigration creates its own market — is argued against the 1922 policy formula the Immigration memorandum quotes. Its Arab population appears chiefly as employees of the larger concerns (350-400 in industry, 400-500 in building), as artisans competing in ordinary trades, and as the holders of the one important pre-war Arab industry, Nablus and Jaffa soap, with which Jewish industry is said not to compete.
The Immigration memorandum is a defence of the Agency’s own machinery: the schedules it prepares, the offices that select, train, examine and receive the immigrants, and the one-year maintenance guarantee are set out in detail, and the Shaw Commission’s departure charge is answered by pointing to the Administration’s final word on numbers. Several of its stated figures conflict with figures given elsewhere in the volume (building-trades employment, the present industrial workforce, Weiz’s families) or do not follow from their printed components; each such case found in this part is held under Open questions rather than resolved.
The Diaspora survey closes by generalising its country sections into the volume’s final claim: the Jewish people worldwide, put at about 16 million, is presented as poor and economically insecure and, in many countries, politically and socially depressed, so the National Home’s value is said to lie in immigration proceeding to the maximum extent the country can be made to absorb it — a formula that treats absorptive capacity as something immigration itself, with the Chalutz movement’s flow of capital, creates, rather than as a prior limit on it. The country sections give their immigrant figures without citing a source for them in the pages read, and their stated figures sum to 89,000 (computed) against the 100,000 total the survey’s introduction states (see Open questions).

People, organizations, places and events

Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund, Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, Keren Hayesod, American Zion Commonwealth, Mandate for Palestine, Joint Palestine Survey Commission, Joseph Weitz, J. W. Evans, HeHalutz, Vaad Leumi, Kupat-Cholim, Histadrut, Mizrachi, Nesher Cement Factory, Palestine Electric Corporation, Palestine Potash Company, Shaw Commission, Balfour Declaration, Immigration Ordinance, 1925, John Hope Simpson

Concepts

Jewish National Home, Economic capacity, Labour Immigration Schedule

How it relates to other sources

Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development examines this Agency case directly: Simpson reports the Agency experts’ 500,000 dunams for citrus against his own safe figure of at least 200,000 more dunams, reports the Agency’s Appendix and settlement statements (including the 38,777 Jewish rural population total that matches Annexe 1’s recapitulation here, PDF p.53), and tests the Agency’s Esdraelon tenant claim against Area Officers’ records. The two works agree on the Survey Commission as a common evidence base and disagree on how much land remains available without displacement. A library catalog card bound into this copy identifies this volume as the Agency memorandum submitted to Simpson for that enquiry in July 1930 (PDF p.113).
With The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate: Mansour, giving evidence to the Peel Commission, argues the Agency crowds out Arab grievances and that its labour interventions displace Arab workers; the Memorandum presents the same Agency’s settlement programme as raising Arab wages, grove planting and tax revenue around the older colonies (PDF p.18-21).
With Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development again: Simpson quotes this volume’s Urban Development memorandum directly on absorptive capacity (the passages at PDF p.73 and PDF p.85-86 here) and answers it, and his account of the Labour Immigration Schedule describes the same machinery the Immigration memorandum describes from the Agency’s side (PDF p.96-102 here). The Agency’s Hechalutz census here (4,003 in training, PDF p.100) and Simpson’s account of Hechalutz training and Histadrut control are two sides of the same system.

Open questions

Kabbara drainage: the stated total spent to December 1929 is £P.92,000, while its listed items (£10,000 + £12,000 + £18,500 + £40,000 + £6,000 + £2,500) sum to £89,000 (computed from PDF p.17).
Petach Tikvah Arab labour: £P.160 a day for 300 working days is £P.48,000 (computed), against the £P.50,000 aggregate stated at PDF p.19-20; the Memorandum also gives Petach Tikvah’s population as nearly 10,000 souls at PDF p.14 and as 9,000 in Annexe 1 (PDF p.50), and its area as about 32,000 dunams at PDF p.14 and 30,450 dunams in Annexe 1.
Maritime Plain summary arithmetic: 50,000 irrigable farms plus 9,000 non-irrigable farms are totalled as 59,000 in the text and in the garbled table at PDF p.34, which is their sum (computed); the room for additional settlement is then 59,000 minus the present 22,000 Arab families = 37,000, as stated.
Citrus area arithmetic: 965,000 dunams of Deiran and Beer-Sheba soils minus 274,000 unirrigable is 691,000 (computed), stated as 690,000 at PDF p.30, before the 190,000 reserve leaves the 500,000-dunam citrus estimate.
Huleh: the area table at PDF p.38 is garbled for private land and the Lake of Merom, and its stated components could not be recovered in full; the 900 cultivator families are said to own about 45,000 dunams at “an average of about 45 dunams per family” (PDF p.40), where 45,000 divided by 900 is 50 (computed); the farm table at PDF p.40 gives 1,600 farms on heavy soil and about 4,545 on light soil, about 6,145 in all (computed), while PDF p.41 estimates total room in the Huleh area at about 4,400 families without showing how the present 2,075 families are deducted.
Beisan: the lands added south of Spring Humra are stated as 67,000 dunams, while the three named areas (Humra 11,136, Campanie 10,000, Tubas 35,000) sum to 56,136 (computed from PDF p.41); spring water is 12,316 cubic metres an hour, stated as 295,440 cubic metres a day at PDF p.43, where 12,316 × 24 = 295,584 (computed); the irrigated farm unit is fixed at 23 dunams in the text (PDF p.43, citing the Key) but the totals are in farms of 25 dunams (PDF p.44); the partly irrigable unit of 100 dunams is composed of 82 + 14 = 96 dunams as printed (computed from PDF p.44); the non-irrigable unit is fixed at 130 dunams but the resulting farms are counted at 150 dunams each (PDF p.44); the Government Chiftlik estimate table at PDF p.42 is garbled for the Beisan figure and its total.
Lower Jordan Valley water: the springs’ hourly yield is 5,862 cubic metres, whose daily equivalent is 140,688 (computed), against daily figures of 212,688 (PDF p.47) and 216,688 (PDF p.47-48) in the text; the stated daily requirement of 857,120 cubic metres and the stated deficit of 640,440 against 216,688 sum to 857,128 (computed). The cultivable balance after a 10 per cent deduction is stated as 225,000 dunams (PDF p.49), where 90 per cent of 252,000 is 226,800 (computed).
Annexe 1: the Hills near Jerusalem population total is 260 in the section (PDF p.51) and 280 in the recapitulation (PDF p.53); the recapitulation’s orange-grove grand total of 58,086½ dunams does not equal the sum of its printed regional figures, 57,958½ + 128 + 117 = 58,203½ (computed). The Memorandum itself notes the totals are not entirely exact (PDF p.53).
The Survey Commission quotation at PDF p.37 prints “in the basin o Lake Huleh” — the “f” of “of” is missing in the original itself, checked against it, and the quotation is kept as printed in Key passages.
Cross-references inside the work: the fellah income analysis is cited at PDF p.37 as “Annexe 5”, but the income table in this part is Annexe 3 (PDF p.54) and Annexe 5 is Settlement in the Hill Country in the Contents (PDF p.5); Evans’ report is cited at PDF p.48 as an extract “under Annexe 7”, but its extract in this part is headed Annexe 4 (PDF p.55) and the Contents list five annexes; Ryerson is cited at p.251 (PDF p.46) and at p.351 in the following paragraph of the same section.
The hill-country annexe’s author is signed “JOSEPH WEIZ” as printed (PDF p.58); the work does not state whether he is the Joseph Weitz of other sources, and the annexe is filed under Joseph Weitz with the printed spelling kept in the text and given as an alias there.
Annexe 4 against the main text: Evans in the extract puts the Bukeia Plateau at “from 300 to 360 square kilometres” (PDF p.56, checked against the original), while the main text’s quotation of Evans at PDF p.48 puts the plateau at 300 to 360 metres above the Dead Sea with an area of about 32 square kilometres.
Annexe 5 arithmetic (all computed from PDF p.57-58, checked against the original): the three hill-valley areas (56,000 + 97,400 + 16,000) sum to 169,400 dunams, stated as 169,900; Judaea’s unsuitable area is printed as 1,024,450 dunams at 35 per cent, where 35 per cent of the Judaea area implied by the stated total (2,931,000 dunams) is 1,025,850; the unsuitable total of 2,007,005 dunams is stated to be “on the average 16.6 per cent” of the hill country, where it is 28.1 per cent of 7,144,500; the 1922 agricultural inhabitants are printed as 313,193, where 283,792 + 29,400 = 313,192; the present population after 15 per cent increase is printed as about 342,170, where 313,193 increased by 15 per cent is 360,172, and 342,170 divided by 5 is 68,434, not the printed 68,440 families; the free area is printed as 2,614,000 dunams, where 5,137,495 − 2,463,840 = 2,673,655 (the printed 74,000 families follows the computed free area, not the printed one); and a 50 per cent reserve on 74,000 families is 37,000, not the printed 35,000. The main text at PDF p.9-10 also puts Weiz’s conclusion at “at least 30,000 additional families”, against Annexe 5’s 35,000 after the reserve.
Urban Development totals (computed from PDF p.65-66, checked against the original): the estimated-enterprises recapitulation gives no production figure for Group C, whose components in §14 sum to £384,000 production, and gives the combined total production as £97,100, which is the sum of the components’ raw-materials figures (£57,100 + £40,000); the final combined production at §16 (£2,119,462) follows the components (£1,635,462 + £484,000). The final wages total is printed as £620,352, where £476,452 + £144,100 = £620,552.
The present industrial workforce is given as 11,349 persons in §16 (PDF p.66), as 11,300 in §21 (PDF p.69) and as 11,000 in the §22 summary (PDF p.69).
Building employment: Urban Development §17 gives Building as 1,887 and §38 as “less than 2,000” (PDF p.66, 84), while Immigration §12 puts Jewish labourers working in the building trades today at about 2,500 (PDF p.95). Urban Development §34 also cites “the figures of paragraph 20” for the 1925-26 crisis claim, where the growth figures are at §21-22, and §20 cites the Group C count as explained in “paragraph 11” and the Groups A and B proportion as calculated in “paragraph 9”, where the counts are at §13.
Vaad Leumi building quotation (PDF p.84, checked against the original): the Jewish contribution items listed (Jerusalem £953,000; Tel-Aviv £2,224,000; Jaffa £77,800; Tiberias £82,800; Safed £3,800) sum to £3,341,400, against the stated total of £3,541,000, and no Haifa contribution item is listed although Haifa’s total building investment (£498,700) is given in the same quotation.
Tel-Aviv building permits at Immigration §12 are aggregated for “the years 1914-1927” (PDF p.95), a period beginning before the post-war period the volume otherwise treats.
Poland at Immigration III (1): about 45,000 emigrants from Poland in the past decade are stated as “approximately 40 per cent. of the total” (PDF p.106); if the total is the 100,000 immigration to Palestine stated at PDF p.105, 45,000 is 45 per cent (computed). What total is meant is not stated.
Yemen departure at PDF p.109 is “simulated” as printed, checked against the original, where the sense requires stimulated (the Lithuania section uses “Stimulated by” at PDF p.108).
The seven country sections of Immigration III state immigrant figures summing to 89,000 (computed from PDF p.106-109), against the 100,000 immigration of the past ten years stated at PDF p.105; the introduction there names the principal contributors in a list that does not include America, which has its own section at PDF p.109, and the remaining 11,000 (computed) is not accounted for by a section.
The library catalog card bound into this copy (PDF p.113, read in the original) heads its entry “Jewish agency for Israel”, while the volume’s own title pages and imprint give the Jewish Agency for Palestine; the card is library matter in this copy, not Agency text.

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